Enroll America’s recent ad campaign on the mobile app Qriously successfully helped the nonprofit encourage uninsured Americans to apply for the government’s health insurance plan, highlighting the potential of mobile in public issues.

The campaign asked Qriously’s 150 million mobile app users "Why do you not have health insurance?" and offered as possible answers "Cost," "Complicated," and "Lack Info." The 53,327 people who offered one of those answers were shown a banner ad for Enroll America, with more than 40 percent clicking on the ad, for a click-through rate of 40.9 percent.

“The sequence mattered in that we only showed ads to people who didn’t have health insurance,” said Joe Zahtila, Qriously’s general manager for North America. “And one of the biggest challenges for marketers is to make sure your message is reaching the right person. And identifying the uninsured is no small task.

“By using the question we were able to identify the uninsured and then sent them a message that educated them or offered greater opportunity for more education in Enroll America in ways of becoming insured.”

Qriously, an opinion-targeted mobile ad company, ran the campaign on behalf of the Ad Council and Enroll America, a nonprofit focused on increasing the number of Americans who sign up for health insurance.

Mobile support

A brand test later showed that exposure to that sequence – question, then banner – had raised the intent to apply for health insurance by 43.56 percent.

With mobile’s importance continuing to grow for nonprofits, organizations such as UNICEF, The Nature Conservancy and Goodwill are leveraging mobile to drive marketing and fundraising efforts.

Qriously’s involvement in the U.S. healthcare plan, a landmark piece of American social policy that has been heavily criticized by the Republican Party, was non-political, Mr. Zahtila said. The project, he said, was good business because the questions led to greater engagement and interest, and helped people who considered enrolling in the health plan to sign up for it.

See ads anyway

“You’re going to see ads anyway,” Mr. Zahtila said. “And to see ads on a topic that you volunteered information on, in a way that’s not intrusive annoying, irritating – that’s a good thing, because they get to see an ad that’s something that they care about.

“If you’re going to see ads anyway, you might as well see ads about things that you like or things that you care about,” he said.